Burner (Gray Man)

Product Information

Artist and academic Lisa Perrin’s first book is a gorgeously illustrated and designed collection of biographies of that most romantic and maligned of villainesses: the poisoner. Greaney has a lot of pages to fill in his third solo Tom Clancy novel (after 2014's Tom Clancy: Full Force and Effect). But Velesky and Zoya soon find themselves being stalked by an elite unit of Russian military operators who have no qualms about killing anyone in their way. Women can be very much the hero, and I just kind of felt like they were relegated to sidekick status for much of the story.

Greaney does an outstanding job of showcasing Zoya as a woman in crisis, and I felt that this was an interesting and realistic jump in her character arc, especially after everything she’s been through in the series.Following legendary assassin Court Gentry, better known as the Gray Man, as he gets involved in several deadly situations, the Gray Man books are one of the leading spy thriller series and I have deeply enjoyed the epic and powerful adventures that Greaney has so far released. This means that when they finally do meet, the emotional pay-off is even more rewarding, and there are some great sequences with them as the story continues. As the scene continues, Greaney keeps quickly moving the point-of-view around from one of the characters to the next, including a couple of minor characters who are mostly there as witnesses.

If I am to accept the quick and dirty writing approach to chug books out, as compared to the first 'Gray Man' novel, then I could accept books involving shooting firearms with toes at the trigger. Finding the burner phone with stolen banking information on it proves to be more of a charge than Gentry expected. Like all the previous Gray Man books, Burner has an outstanding pacing to it that quickly draws the readers in and ensures that they stick around for the entire ride. Greaney frames an exceptionally good redemption arc around Alex in Burner as the character, who is feeling guilty for the years he’s spent illegally moving Russian money, attempts to finally reveal all the crimes he’s been apart of.

Burner was another exceptional novel that had me hooked from the very beginning all the way to the final, devastating encounter. It doesn’t help that one of the most elite Russian assassins is set on obtaining the data and will kill anyone who gets in his way. Despite this, there isn’t an awful lot of character development around Court in this one, except for updating his status with the CIA. Zoya was on a job to capture a Ukrainian banker who had downloaded highly classified transactions between the West and Russia .